[HelloMcFly]

That paper would suggest to me that perhaps eggs are as animal as we need to get. I agree with your specific point here, but it feels like a small thing when considering the overall societal and environmental cost of animal protein (esp. beef, pork, lamb).

[AmericanChopper]

If you tried to get all your calories from eating eggs, your diet would have too much fat and not enough carbs. In reality you need a balanced and varied diet, and the world couldn’t support 7 billion people all deciding to get their protein intake from one specific food item anyway. Animal products are simply better at providing the protein you need. You _can_ get all of it from plant based sources (I’m not sure whether it would be theoretically possible for all humans to adopt such a diet), but it’s more difficult. Meaning if you want to meet your nutritional requirements without having a big calorie excess, you have to plan your diet very carefully, and implement a highly restrictive program. If you want to do that without eating highly processed foods such as soy protein isolate (which is a popular dietary restriction), then you’re going to have an even harder time.

[pg_1234]

"not enough carbs" is the easiest problem to solve (just add wheat/rice/potato etc.) ... in fact the normal problem is too much carbs.

[AmericanChopper]

That depends on whether you care about eating too many calories. If your average person got all their protein from eggs, they’d eat too much fat, way too much saturated fat, and have very few calories left to get in all of their other nutritional needs.

Incidentally, that’s why it is possible to eat a healthy plant based diet if you’re very active. If you burn 2000 active calories a day, then it matters less if you’re eating nutritionally inefficient food, because you can make up for it in volume.

[HelloMcFly]

I'm not arguing for some sort of protein gruel or standard diet; my comment wasn't advocating for "only eggs", just reacting to what you share.

I am stating that it seems inarguable to me that the benefits of meaningfully reducing or even eliminating animal consumption far outweigh the negatives (note: I'm not a vegetarian). The concerns about protein completeness are real, but they have to stand in the sunlight of the full picture, and when viewed that way it doesn't appear to be some unsolveable riddle.

So I'm not arguing the point, I'm arguing against the implicit takeaway that comments like yours can appear to make: that meaningfully reducing or eliminating animals from our diets isn't a goal worth pursuing.